Monday, September 14, 2020

¿QUÉ TE GUSTA? Lesson Idea for levels 1 & 2

Today I'm sharing a lesson that will engage students and provide you, the teacher, with a load of possibilities to comprehensible input related to the students' responses. My example is today's lesson with repetitions of the verb GUSTAR, but you can switch out the vocabulary and keep the same type of format for any structures. 

As background, at my school students with last names beginning with A-K on come to school on "A" days and the rest of the students login from home and watch/participate in the lesson synchronously.  The next day students L-Z are at school while the A-K students learn online synchronously. There are a handful of students that are 100% synchronous. What that means, is that everyday I am working simultaneously with students in person and students online. I created this activity so students could participate regardless of their physical location. (For another activity for hybrid classes or for regular classes too, see THIS POST.)

Create the Google Slide Presentation. The title slide is shown above. On the second slide, I created a separate text box with each of the students' names. (I changed the names for this blogpost.) You could have your students do this, but I decided to provide this for the students so the font, size, and color were uniform. 

Don't forget to add your name too!

Then I made several slides that asked students if they liked something and gave them two options (yes, I like.... or no I don't like....). To prevent students from accidentally (or purposefully) clicking on the text boxes and photos on each slide, I saved the slide as a PNG and then uploaded the PNG as a background. 

You can go over the slides before you instruct the students how to respond, but I added some translations to the slides so I wouldn't have to do that.

Share the Google Slide Presentation. I shared the document with the students by placing it on Schoology, our LMS. I shared it so they did NOT have to make a copy because I want all of the students answering on one presentation.


Demonstrate how to add your name to the slides. 
I demonstrated how to click on my na
me, press COMMAND + C to copy my name, and then move to another slide to paste their name with COMMAND + V (on a MAC). To add my name to other slides, I continued to press COMMAND + V. 

Then I told the students to do the same and to add their names to the appropriate spot on each slide. Yes, it DID get tricky at times for students to add their names and then move it to the correct side, but everyone managed. For the second class that I had for the day, I told students to go to another slide that wasn't as busy with other students. 


Discussion of the students' answers. After the students at school and at home had added their names to the slides, I asked personalized questions in Spanish about their answers, i.e. What flavor of ice cream do you like? Do you like to swim in the ocean or in a swimming pool? You said you like the city better than the country, what are two cities that you like?

Write and discuss. I asked a student to name one of the students in the class and then we wrote several sentences about that student, and then additional sentences to describe how many students liked or didn't like something on the slides. I split my computer screen with the slide presentation on one side and the paper on which I was writing with the help of the document camera on the other side.

Another use for the Google Slide Presentation. Take screenshots of four slides after the names are added. Put those on one slide and then ask true/false questions about the information as a closing activity. 

The good and the bad: (similar to what Keith Toda does on his blog, Todally Comprehensible, that I really like. He names it "observations".)

- The activity provided both reading input (when they read to answer the questions) and listening input

- With only a few slides, there is a lot of information to work with.

- Students were engaged not only when adding their names to the slides, but also when anticipating that I may ask them about their response.

- It can be tricky when students move their name to one column or the other. Some students may be tempted to delete other's answers or move them.

- After one class's google slide presentation is finished, it was easy to copy the entire presentation and change only the names on slide 2. 

- If group work is possible in your setting, you can assign one slide to a group and working with their group members, they can write additional sentences.

- The students' answers on the slides can be used the following day with short answer questions.

If you want a copy which you can edit, click HERE.